


Surprise

by Harley Writes Fanfic (Needle_Bones)



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: I Don't Even Know, Joseb - Freeform, M/M, Pointless kinda-fluff stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 00:34:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7130924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Needle_Bones/pseuds/Harley%20Writes%20Fanfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're Joseph Oda. You're 'order' personified. You don't do surprising things."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surprise

“This is why your lung capacity is terrible, you know.”

Sebastian craned his head back, an awkward thing to do from his current position sprawled on the damp concrete, and found himself looking up at a rather irritated Joseph Oda.

“Hey,” he said, completely ignoring the previous comment. “It's late. Thought you'd be asleep by now.” He picked his left arm up just enough to bring the cigarette to his lips again, trying not to smile when Joseph rolled his eyes.

“I was working,” Joseph said in that clipped way he did whenever he was annoyed. He stepped over Sebastian's outstretched right arm and two paces farther before he stopped, staring out over the black water of the lake. “I didn't think you'd gone home, so I figured I should come find you.” _And make sure you weren't drinking again_ was the unspoken continuation of that sentence.

Anger turned a tight circle in Sebastian's chest. “I don't need you to babysit me,” he said, looking up at the few stars he could see this far into Krimson City. There were heavy clouds off to the west, but they were supposed to miss the city by a few miles, so he'd decided that hanging around by the water wasn't such a bad way to spend his few off-hours. He’d hadn’t been anywhere near the lake in years anyway.

He exhaled a cloud of smoke and missed Joseph looking back at him, crossing his arms. “Besides, you've been up for about 48 hours yourself. You should go home.”

“I'm fine.”

“You always say that and I let you get away with it, but you never believe me when I say it.”

“You never mean it when you say it.” Joseph's voice had a rough edge to it. If Sebastian hadn’t known better, he might have thought he’d been crying.

“And you do?”

Silence then, under the pulse of the small waves that crawled over the concrete, kicked up by the wind.

Sebastian was lying slightly off-center on the angled pad that the residents used to launch their boats from. He and Myra had rented one for a weekend when Lily had been around three and it had always stuck with him, the feeling of being out there on the water. It was getting too late in the year for anything as 'summer-y' as sailing now though, so he settled for lying at the edge of the lake and thinking.

Before too long, Sebastian started to feel the weight of simply _not talking_ on his chest and his throat, like that sudden spike in humidity after a rainstorm. It seemed like it would stretch on and on forever if he didn't say _something._ He was just about to open his mouth when Joseph sighed. It was that soft, through-his-teeth kind of sigh that he’d had only heard a couple of times before. Resigned, he guessed, was the word for it.

Joseph walked back and promptly sat down beside him, stretching his left arm back and leaning his weight on it. Sebastian glanced back and wondered if he could feel just how damn cold the ground was through those gloves. About a second later he realized that he could wrap his arm around Joseph's waist pretty easily with the way they were sitting.

“How long have you been out here?”

“Hmm?”

“You left before sunset.” Joseph shifted, turning a bit to look at him. Something flickered into his eyes then. Sebastian couldn't be sure but it looked suspiciously close to worry. “Don't tell me you've just been lying out here for hours.”

He shrugged, which was apparently the wrong thing to do because Joseph made a small, flustered noise in his throat quickly followed by “ _Seb_ ”.

It was a simple nickname, but it wasn't one he allowed a lot of people to use and hearing it from Joseph could sometimes make his heart twist enough that he thought it would crack his ribs. This turned out to be one of those times.

Sebastian fought the urge to grin, to reach for him, to pull him closer. _It’s cute that you worry._

“It's fine,” he said, gesturing loosely with his cigarette. _Just a stupid crush._ “I'm literally two minutes from the hospital going that way, and it's not even supposed to rain tonight. See? I'm paying attention.”

“It's only in the fifties out here. Aren't you cold?”

He glanced up at Joseph, then glanced away just as quickly. There was something strange about this, about having the man perched next to him like he was, his long legs curled slightly on the rough ground, cold seeping through his clothes. Maybe it was just the late hour, the moonlight off the water, the fact that neither of them had been sleeping well – or sleeping at all – the past few days. Whatever it was, it had his heart beating faster than it needed to, his mind wandering off into some dark corner with that completely innocent question.

He shrugged again. Shrugs were safe. He couldn't stutter or say something he hadn't meant to that way.

Joseph sighed, less resigned and more annoyed now. He looked up, following Sebastian's gaze. “You can be so frustrating,” he said, more to himself than to his partner.

“I try.” Back to normal. Nice and easy.

“You succeed.” Pause. “Why do you do things like this? You'll go for months and I'll always know where you are, and then you just drop off the map and I think...”

Sebastian waited, but he didn't continue. After about half a minute, he asked, “What? That I'm back in some bar?”

“That you've gone missing again.”

This time, Sebastian really couldn't think of anything to say. It was something of an unspoken rule between them by that point: Don't bring up the hospital. This was doing exactly that, though granted it was in a slightly roundabout way.

Eventually, he managed to force the words 'I'm sorry' passed his teeth and Joseph just nodded, dark eyes fixed straight ahead at the shifting water. Several minutes slid by before he spoke again.

“Well, it's never boring,” he said, glancing back at Sebastian and trying to smile. “You can always surprise me.”

“Yeah, well... One of us has to be the weird one.”

That earned him a laugh. “You really think that out of the two of us, _you're_ the weird one?”

“Weird in that 'I'm going to go lie on a concrete ramp at ten-thirty at night' kind of way, yeah. You're Joseph Oda,” Sebastian said, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back. “You're ‘order’ personified. You don't do surprising things.”

Of course, Joseph didn't answer. He hadn't really expected him to. But then, faintly, Sebastian heard a soft clicking sound, barely audible over the hiss and shift of the water. It was the same kind of sound Joseph's glasses made when he folded them up. About half a second later, he understood why.

Joseph let his right hand rest against the side of Sebastian's neck, gloved fingers keeping just enough pressure at his jaw to hold him still. Sebastian dropped his cigarette, heard it hiss against the lake before he relaxed and slid his hand up Joseph's arm, holding onto him. It was a soft kiss, gentle but firm – the kind that always set Sebastian's head swimming and his heart slamming against his ribs. Joseph tasted like stale coffee and sanity and for a few long moments, nothing else in the world existed or mattered but them, this night, this place, that kiss.

“Surprise...” So quiet it was barely a word at all. “I've been wanting to do that for a while now,” Joseph told him when they broke apart, breathless. They were close enough for their lips to brush when he spoke, the words ghosting into the negligible space between them, hanging there until Sebastian could taste them, gather them up in his head.

He let his old crooked smile tug at his lips. “That a fact?”

Joseph made a quiet humming sound in his throat, lying his head on Sebastian's chest. He could hear his heart beating hard and fast beneath his ribs, could hear how the feeling of his gloved fingers running along the man's jaw and down his throat made it skip and flutter.

Sebastian leaned into his touch, gently carding his fingers through Joseph’s hair. “Me, too.”

He said it so softly that Joseph almost missed it beneath the sound of the wind, the city, the water. He did catch it though, and he smiled, running his knuckles along his partner's collarbone before placing his hand firmly on his chest, palm right over his heart.

Sebastian tightened his hold on him, his other arm having found its way around Joseph's slight waist, and pressed a kiss to his hair, his forehead, his cheek, his lips. This would all be different in the morning, he knew. It would feel more solid, more real, and it would leave them with a lot of questions to answer and conversations to have and red tape to cut through.

But for the moment, it was simple. For the moment, he could lie outside in the dark and the chill with his arms wrapped around someone he loved. It had been far too long since he'd felt like this and he didn't intend on letting that feeling, or Joseph, go anytime soon.

**Author's Note:**

> My life’s been getting kind of rough lately, so I figured writing shippy fanfic again might help take my mind off of things. Thankfully, it appears to be working.


End file.
